In particular, on-going, in-flight course corrections, along with a final trajectory correction maneuver, had been intended to place the spacecraft into an optimum orbit at an altitude of 140 miles above the planet. Post-failure analysis quickly identified a problem with the spacecraft trajectory. Anxious ground controllers searched in vain for its signal for two days, before the $125 million mission was declared a loss. As it passed around the far side of the planet the signal was lost, as expected (due to the signal being occulted by Mars), but, 21 minutes later, once the calculated trajectory should have carried it back around the planet to a point where ground controllers on Earth would again receive its signal, there was, instead……silence. On September 23 rd, 1999, after a 9-month, 416-million mile journey, the Climate Orbiter spacecraft reached Mars. The mission was the Mars Climate Orbiter, a space probe launched by NASA on Decemto study the climate and atmosphere of Mars, and to serve as a communications relay for the Mars Polar Lander, which was scheduled to reach Mars in December 1999. But lest we think our European friends are the only ones capable of making such a mistake, let’s look at another mission failure which started closer to home-at NASA-although, in this instance, the problem didn’t finally manifest itself until the mission was considerably further away-at Mars.
#Mars climate orbiter mistake software#
In hindsight, the error-which basically amounted to a failure to recognize that the new and improved spacecraft would travel considerably faster than the one it replaced (who would of thought?), and as such, perhaps the guidance software should be upgraded-seems obvious.
In a previous blog entry, we described a software error that led to the loss of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 spacecraft in June of 1996.
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